A JAPANESE archaeologist has confessed to faking several important
palaeolithic finds. This means that the country’s earliest Stone Age tools were
made by people who lived a mere 40,000 years ago rather than 60,000 years ago,
as the history books now say.
The man who perpetrated the fraud was Shinichi Fujimura, deputy director of
the Tohoku Palaeolithic Institute. He was said to have “divine hands” because of
his unerring ability to find stone artefacts.
Fujimara led excavations at some of Japan’s key palaeolithic sites. Last
month, he announced the discovery of stone tools at the Kamitakamori dig, north…
